Boeing to make design changes to prevent future 737 MAX 9 door panel blowout

WASHINGTON – Boeing said Tuesday it plans to make design changes to prevent a future crash cabin panel blowout in the air such as the one during an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight in January, which plunged the aircraft manufacturer into its second major crisis in recent years.

The National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing said officials still have not determined who removed and reinstalled the door plug on that plane during production.

NTSB on Tuesday completed the first of two days of hearings that lasted nearly 10 hours following the midair emergency that severely damaged Boeing’s reputation and led to the grounding of the MAX 9 for two weeks. a Federal Aviation Administration ban on expanding productiona crime investigation and the departure of a number of key figures.

Investigators have said the door plug on the new Alaska MAX 9 was missing four key bolts.

Boeing, which has promised to make significant quality improvementfaced extensive questions about the production of the accident MAX 9 and the lack of paperwork documenting the removal of the door plug.

NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy on Tuesday criticized the plane maker’s safety culture, asking why it had not made improvements sooner and saying it must take steps to improve it. “The safety culture needs a lot of work,” Ms. Homendy said.

Boeing’s senior vice president for quality, Elizabeth Lund, said the planemaker is working on design changes that it hopes to implement within the year and then adapt across the fleet.

“They are working on some design changes that will prevent the door plug from closing if there is a problem until it is securely tightened,” Ms Lund said..

Ms. Lund said two Boeing employees believed to have been involved in opening the door plug have been placed on paid administrative leave.

The board also released 3,800 pages of factual reports and interviews about the ongoing investigation.

Boeing has said there is no paperwork to document the removal of four key missing bolts. Lund said Boeing has now placed a bright blue and yellow sign on the door plug upon arrival at the factory that reads: “Do not open” and added a redundancy “to ensure the plug is not accidentally opened.”“

A flight attendant described a moment of fear when the door plug blew out. “And then all of a sudden there was a really loud bang and a lot of whooshing air, like the door was bursting open,” the flight attendant said. “The masks came down, I saw the galley curtain being sucked towards the cabin.”

Doug Ackerman, vice president of supplier quality at Boeing, said Boeing has 1,200 active suppliers for its commercial aircraft and 200 supplier quality auditors.

Ms. Lund said Tuesday that Boeing is still building “in the 20s” of monthly MAX production — far fewer MAXs than the 38 it is allowed to produce per month. “We are working on getting back up. But at one point I think we were only eight,” Ms. Lund told the NTSB.

Last month, Boeing agreed repurchase Spirit AeroSystems, whose core plants it spun off in 2005, for $4.7 billion in shares.

The hearings discuss important issues, included 737 production and inspections, safety management and quality management systems, FAA Oversightand problems surrounding opening and closing the door plug.

FUSAGE DEFECTS

Jonathan Arnold, an aviation safety inspector with the FAA, said a systemic problem he witnessed at the Boeing factory was employees not following instructions.

“That seems to be systemic if they deviate from their instructions. And typically the tool check is what I see the most,” said Mr. Arnold.

Ms. Lund said that before the Jan. 5 accident, every 737 fuselage delivered to Boeing by Spirit AeroSystems had defects. “What we don’t want are the really big defects that impact the production system,” Ms. Lund said. “We started seeing more and more of these types of problems, I can tell you, around the time of the accident.”

Ms. Homendy at one point expressed her frustration with Boeing. “The safety culture needs a lot of work (at Boeing),” she said. “There’s not a lot of trust, there’s a lot of distrust within the workforce.”

Boeing director Carole Murray described several problems with fuselages from Spirit AeroSystems in the run-up to the accident. “We had flaws. Sealant was one of our biggest flaws that we had written about,” she said. “We had multiple escapements around the window frame, skin abnormalities.”

Michelle Delgado, a construction engineer who worked as a contractor at Boeing and did the redesign of the Alaska MAX 9 aircraft, told NTSB that the workload is heavy and requires long hours.

“To make sure I don’t have to deal with a worse situation tomorrow, I prefer to work a 12- to 13-hour shift to get everything done, for myself, so I don’t have to deal with people the next day. day,he told NTSB.

Also in June, the NTSB said Boeing violated this investigative rules when Lund provided non-public information to the media and speculated about possible causes.

Last month, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of at least $243.6 million to resolve a Justice Department investigation into two fatal 737 MAX crashes. – Reuters